Present - Saturday Morning
Somewhere in Manila
Dr. Chase Miller woke to the sound of rain - steady, rhythmic, like fingertips tapping gently on glass.
He hadn't drawn the curtains in his hotel room the night before. The skyline beyond the window was now blurred in mist, the city's chaos softened by the storm.
He sat up slowly.
On the nightstand, a folded photo of his old team in Africa sat beside a silver pocket watch and a knotted red thread - frayed at the ends, tied years ago during a mission he barely survived.
He hadn't worn it in months.
But last night, after shaking Jade Vera's hand, he put it back on.
He didn't know why.
Just that something in his bones told him he should.
Flashback - Four Years Ago
Kampala, Uganda
He was elbow-deep in an emergency trauma surgery, the patient a young girl whose body had been flung from a motorbike.
It was raining. The clinic generator had failed twice.
A local nurse tied a string around his wrist before the procedure began.
Nurse: "It's for the spirits. They follow the red."
He chuckled then. Dismissed it.
But after the girl survived, he kept the string.
And every time he nearly died after that, he found it still holding on.
Present - The Manila Museum of Human Resilience
Jade hadn't planned to go.
The museum was a pop-up exhibit co-funded by Vera Holdings, focusing on local stories of survival, loss, and healing. It was supposed to be a photo op. PR. A feel-good cause.
But when she arrived, she didn't expect the stillness.
Each installation told the story of a different survivor - fire, flood, assault, pandemic, war. Their voices echoed in the corners of the space, spoken through speakers hidden behind canvases.
She stood before a wall filled with letters never sent. One caught her eye.
It was written by someone named Isla.
"I still think about the stranger who held my hand while I bled. He didn't stay. But maybe he wasn't meant to. Maybe he was the bridge, not the destination."
Jade (to herself): "What if I keep meeting bridges?"
A soft voice interrupted her thoughts.
Chase: "You're here early."
She turned.
He stood by a sculpture installation - his presence quiet, unassuming, but impossible to ignore.
Jade: "I fund half of this. I get to be early."
Chase: [smiling faintly] "And yet you don't seem like the photo op type."
Jade: "I'm not. But I am the ghost-chasing type lately."
Chase: "Ghosts?"
Jade: "Not literal. But... moments. Feelings. That pull you backward."
They stood in silence for a while.
YOU ARE READING
The One I Cannot Touch
Romance"How do you love someone who carries the heart of the man you already lost?" Jade Celestine Vera is rich, guarded, and grieving - still haunted by the death of her fiancé five years ago. Dr. Chase Alexander Miller is Manila's top trauma surgeon, sav...
